Monday, March 30, 2015

415 Media Monday Survey: What's Your Morning Routine?

The morning ritual--better yet, your morning ritual. For many of you preparing to go into the office, it's turning on the TV and watching the local news while you sip your coffee and get ready. For others, it's the radio and traffic and weather reports or is it?

Tell me your morning routine. Has it changed? Do you even look for news? Or maybe it's more music and jazz to get your day going, I'd be interested to know.

25 comments:

Yes, radio all the way in the AM. Used to be Wygant and Dunbar and the whole KGO am crew. Couldn't take the switch to Baxter and Geist or Jones. Years ago of course Frank and Mike were must listens. And when I was in middle school it was KSFO's Gene Nelson - and John Madden- in the early '80's. Last 10 years Knibber all the way, M & M, it could be worse!

Get up. Stagger in to kitchen and make coffee. Stagger over to desk and start surfing the Internet until I wake up. Note that the TV *and* the radio are OFF. Try it some time; you may be surprised how peaceful it is in the morning.

I work as a news writer/producer at a TV station in L.A., and here's my early-morning routine:

My alarm goes off at 3:00 a.m., at which time I put on "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, which gives me a good overview of which national and international stories are top of the mind with the media types in New York and Washington. During this time, I'm also on the internet, checking out stories on Drudge, Huffington Post, NY Times, LA Times, Yahoo! and as many other sites that I have time to check out.

4:00 a.m. I watch the top of the KTLA Morning news .. 3 or 4 headlines and weather report before they start talking nonsense. Then I jump in the shower and afterwards keep one eye on the TV as I walk around the house doing ADL's (activities of daily living).

4:30 a.m. I switch over to KTTV for the start of that station's morning news. I have that on for about 10 minutes until I leave the house.

4:40 a.m. I am out the door, in the car headed to work listening to KNX-AM for 20 minutes, catching news, traffic, weather and sports headlines.

I check my email and look at WSJ.com and Foxnews.com briefly for news and headlines. SFGATE used to be my primary news online but it's just too slow to load most of the time so I don't usually bother with it anymore. I have a similar problem with CNN.com since they redid their site a couple months ago. When I go online for news I want to see text stories because it's so much faster then watching video, which is usually preceded by an advertisement. When I'm on the way I'll have either KCBS or NPR on when I'm driving or in the bus. I've pretty much given up on most of the TV news, it takes forever for them to tell a story and often there is just too much fluff that wastes my time.

Like @9:24 I am retired but I am not a fan of Murph and Mac. I turn on KCBS for a while to see what's going on and usually catch the segment with Madden. After that, I switch to music from my cd's, Pandora, or sirius xm radio while I have breakfast.

I walk and sometimes jog starting around 6:45 - 7:00 to 8:30 - 9:00; climb a hill, pushups, leg lifts, stretches and...do this while switching between Murph and Mac and NPR. A little twisted. ..when I've gotten the highlights, scores, Kruk or Kuip and I get irritated at (take your pick of one or all) whitebread idiocy, Grateful Dead crap, 80's rock star or yacht rock crap, UCLA honkage or Mac's incessant 'yeah, yeah, yeahhhh', then, I hit KQED for something like "...today, Boko Haram burned another village; here's a five minute translation of an eyewitness account..." The rest of the day is Sirius or KPOO or a lotta silence

Murph has the "yeah, yeah, yeah," down pretty good too. Everything you write is true but you forgot to add when they repeat their quips hoping to get a laugh the second time when there wasn't one the first time 'round.

Get up, dog out, dog back in, feed dog. Read Santa Rosa Press Democrat and turn on KTVU or KPIX listen to them read the stories they culled from the Press Democrat. Turn channel when they start repeating stories (about 10 minutes in with KTVU). Dan Patrick on NBCSN if the wife doesn't get the remote first, otherwise CBS Morning show. Retired so my life follows a rigid pattern.

I'm retired, I start with MO2. Torie and Dave are really stinky but I like the quick paced format. Sal and Steve are great. Then Jon Stewart to really get me going. Then on to CNN. Last but not least, Rich Lieberman

Up at 4:45, go to gym. Come back for breakfast and coffee. Check weather reports (my employees work outside), SFGATE (no problems here). FARK.com and emails then meet the crews at 7:00. Head to office.

I start on the crapper with the iPad. Check CCTimes(I'm in the east bay), Huffpo, Facebook, All Access, a variety of email accounts, and yes-this blog!

Occasionally I can check KTVU/KGO/KPIX Morning TV news as well as surf some of the network cable news. If not, I hop in the car & button push my way to work listening the top 40, classic rock & AAA stations as well as Bunger & Radnich.

Wake up at 5 a.m. Look at facebook while making coffee. Get in shower. Turn on Alice 97.3. Listen to Alice during my commute until 6:28 when they have a break. Turn on 680 for two minutes. Then at 6:30 turn on 740 to get around 7 minutes of news. Then it's back to Sarah and Vinnie until i arrive in my office at 7. Then i search twitter for all of my news before starting work around 8...

Wake up, make sure kids are ready for and going to school. Listen to Howard Stern for the first hour of his show on youtube and later in the day the last but it gets hard because show is consuming and distracting. Visit your website during my lunch hour once or twice a week to see that nothing has changed. Use the NYTIMES website (which I pay for) for news and Google News reader. Continue my day editing various bits of audio and video that gets sent to me as I am a freelancer editor. I normally do not see anyone else but my family unless I go pickup dinner.

I wake up early enough with my hangover and turn on MSNBC. A little hair of the dog, and then it's off to the mill. That reminds me of something I was going to ask and that is why don't the Eureka stations come in very well in Scotia?

I'm retired but my routine hasn't varied much. I don't have a set wakeup time but I'm usually up by 7 when I watch Today for the first half hour-I used to work for NBC in Burbank and still feel something for NBC. After that I catch up on the recorded shows from last night-Charlie Rose mostly. Then off to walk and run errands.Pretty tame compared with life in LA.Off topic but my most unusual experience in LA was during the Rodney King riots when I was shooting the morning news on KTTV in Hollywood and the drive in was through deserted streets because of the curfew. Scary.

Lately I've tended toward local television rather than radio in the early morning -- I don't necessarily watch it closely, after all it repeats itself so often, but I find it more useful as an electronic companion. I honestly feel that the effect that stations try so hard for -- familiar faces and comfortable formats -- works better in mornings than in other parts of the day. You are getting your stuff together and it works as kind of a light bulb in the dawn, and I even watch with the sound muted. I prefer KPIX. Radio for me is the default setting at the end of the day. KCBS -- reliable news and good pipes.

Wake up. Ingest caffeine. Turn on Fox New to watch the same "Obama is destroying the world" stories that they have every day. (Total garbage but entertaining.)

30 minutes after I wake up, I take a crap. Then I take a shower and brush my teeth. Get dressed. Watch TV for 15-20 more minutes. Drive to the BART station, usually listening to Gary and Larry on KNBR on the way.